


Humanoid

by RosVailintin



Series: Manquer D'Amour N'Est Pas Un Crime [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Immortal Jim Moriarty, Immortality, Inspired by Fanfiction, M/M, POV Narrator, Post-Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Post-Reichenbach, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Pre-Reichenbach, Second Person, Song Lyrics, Translation, but the story hasn't changed, by request, this is a slightly different from the chinese version, uh...can i say it's a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:05:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9165385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosVailintin/pseuds/RosVailintin
Summary: The only thing in common that you have with a body, is probably just that it's been ages since you last tasted tears. And at this moment, he gets up, placing an arm around your waist and holding you close, your deadly cold cheek pressed against his warm chest where you hear his heartbeat.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sszdyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sszdyl/gifts).
  * A translation of [花落無情](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9130114) by [RosVailintin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosVailintin/pseuds/RosVailintin). 
  * Inspired by [THE WALKING DEAD/不死人](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/251920) by ginsky. 
  * Inspired by [Things I Didn't Say](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7979491) by [RosVailintin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosVailintin/pseuds/RosVailintin). 



> Yes it's Tokio Hotel again! _Humanoid_ is really cool both German and English version. One of my friends said her German buddies didn't like them but well, they're amazing aren't they! And _Roses_ by HomeTown, I've mentioned this song so many times but I have to repeat that it's the most beautiful song in the world right! At least for me it is. For years I decided my favourite was _Maybe Tomorrow_ by Westlife and I still love that song so much, but then there's _Roses_ and I was like omg omg omg!  
>  Ok uh...let's talk about this fic right. The original work is in Chinese and damn that was so not like me! I promised (sort of) not to write anything in Chinese (because 7 years ago I've wrote less than 800 characters and my lovely WMC told me to stop and write English), but then there's SS who has read my handwritten script for a Westlife fic I wrote some 8 years ago titled _Evergreen_ (which is the very first fic I've ever written btw) and well ok for some reason she somehow talked me into writing a little fic in Chinese. But well, I have to write an English version and I don't know if this can be really called a translation bc it's not totally the same. Jim is first person in the Chinese version (and will still be in the French translation which is literally a translation), but here he will be second person (uh maybe this is not so easy to understand bc I tried to explain it clearly with words to SS but she hasn't yet got it so I have to explain with this whole work), and Seb will be third person and I myself is the actual first person.  
>  Anyways...this will be kinda sad. I mean, I think it's kinda sad but SS always believes that we can take it as a happy ending (does it even have an ending though) so...I don't know. Jim is immortal, or a 'walking dead', as ginsky says (in that work John is immortal). And this work is a bit like another one in this series called [_Things I Didn't Say_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7979491).  
>  And shite why am I writing longer and longer notes! Still thanks to SS I've got some more ideas for _C'est D'Ici Que Je Vous Écris_ (I've said that in the replies to SS's comments on the Chinese version) parce que merde! (Did I just speak French) She gave me so many inspirations I'm afraid this series will take me ages to finish. Just praying I can finish it by graduation.  
>  Ok here we go.  
> PS Damn my pharyngitis! It's been some 10 years! 啊然後還是gift一下散沙小姐姐吧畢竟我真的解釋了這麽久的人稱轉換...*這又有一毛錢的邏輯關係嗎! 感覺你的giftbox一下就爆炸了我錯了都是我的鍋 *facepalm* Oh and fuck S4E1 is so damn...uh I can't even pick a word in all the languages I know merde! Mary just died like this? And 'go to hell Sherlock'? So villains love vids right? Ugh I need Andrew please just *facepalm* I feel like it's really a good idea to write _C'est D'Ici Que Je Vous Écris_ after S4.

I wanna see roses fall like snow, walk beneath the stars on streets of gold, 'cause I would give it all to have your heart come home, and make me strong.

\- HomeTown·Roses

* * *

It's probably been long enough since he began to feel that everything about you is a bit different. It's just that he has never talked about it - never before this moment, right? He may felt that you didn't like to start it either, or he may decided that it was another of your secrets, or still, it's possibly just that you just hadn't let him, let anyone, get too close to you.

That's it. No one - not even your long-forgotten parents - is ever so close to you like him right now. For years, you have drawn an invisible boundary around you. Sherlock has got the closest, but he didn't cross it - or, you have never given him the opportunity to cross it. Certainly, in all people whom you can say you know, he is a very special one. But Sherlock is still not the same as the man right here beside you. It's not that he greeted you when you first met but Sherlock didn't even look at you; for you, etiquette don't even matter. Maybe it's because, unlike others, he doesn't really try to get near you. At the beginning, of course, he treated you the way that he would treat every boss, but from you don't know when on, he seemed to have understood that the way he should get on with you was not like that with everyone else. In his eyes, you see an emotion that's strange but somehow familiar. You have always been seeking for a word to describe what's special about him, but you can't. Yes, there are things that you can't do, especially when it comes to emotions. For so long, emotions have always been your greatest weakness, and it's only now, in front of him and only him, do you speak this out. You're changeable but look the same, which makes you suspicious, but that's not really your fault. Having survived for so long, on the outside, it's still this face that you wear, but deep inside it's near impossible to maintain who you are forever, yet you cannot let it show.

But he is always who he is. When you told him you were going to St Bart's, he didn't say a thing except looking into your eyes, his ice blue irises reflecting the slightly too bright sun. In his pupils that have increased a little, you saw yourself - a face horribly pale that had no trace of ever aging, and deep, dark eyes like an abandoned grave. This numb figure looked so weird in his eyes. Finally, as you shrugged on your coat and stretched a hand towards the lock, he stood in front of you, blocking your way, and whispered, 'Don't.' You stopped there. For one instant, you seriously wondered what the hell was it all for that you kept such a childish person and expected his assistance and cover. However, the next instant, you found it hard to move your hand that wanted to push him aside. There are things that you can never explain clearly to him, like why you just need to go to St Bart's, like why you can be so indifferent to the life of whomever. Even with so many lives killed by him, every time before a mission, he always asks, 'Do they really have to die?' And every time you give him an almost disgusted look, he goes silent and leaves. It's probably the abnormal indifference that you hold against death that makes him question who you really are, a human, or something else; just a few years' time isn't yet enough to let him discover that you will never grow old. You don't remember well how you made him give in, step aside and watch you leave without a word before still quietly locking the door behind him - well, it seems like it's really not a good idea to shoot yourself at the back of your head. But you remember forcing yourself not to care about what you would do and think after you went in - not to care about the fading light in your eyes as you moved out of my way to let me go. The sun was still warm, shining on people's smiling faces; this kind of sunlight was so out of place in London. You arrived a bit early, and you slowly sat down on the slightly higher edge of the rooftop, you side towards the little door that would lead to this place. It wouldn't be long before Sherlock would push the door open. St Bart's Hospital was quite a tall building around the place, which meant that not many people would be able to watch this show. You felt a bit sorry for that. John would probably see the end of it, but before that, he would be doing whatever Sherlock had asked him to do - Sherlock really loved his pet; you had found this back when you were at the pool. That time, the guns was already aiming at him, just as you shouted, 'That's what people do!' But he has never mentioned it, and has never changed a thing because of it.

The phone rang in your pocket. _Stayin' Alive_ sounded so savage and conceited yet so tiny, like a purposefully-made splash on the vast ocean. It was his call.

You stared at the white name on the screen, Sebbie. He has always been unhappy with it; he thinks that Sebbie is a girl's name, a girl with 'coffee colour hair, green eyes and slightly tanned skin'. But still, every time you call him Sebbie, he responds, even with plenty of unwillingness. Sometimes, you just enjoy watching him being annoyed but controlling himself not to lose temper in front you. You don't know why on earth he thinks someone named Sebbie should be a girl like that, but he's got way too many quirks, such as the necessity to eat a piece of Godiva's 85% seasalt chocolate with black tea with apple before touching the cross on his chest. He called at this time probably out of the worry that you would do extreme things, but he knew your plan, didn't he? Last night, you told him everything that would happen the next day, as you always do. When you said you were seeing Sherlock, he frowned. but didn't comment. It was not after you had finished and was ready to walk out that he called you.

'Yes?'

But he just stood there, silent, fingers twining together subconsciously. The moonlight of midnight leaked in through the half-closed curtains, pouring on one side of your face. After a blank of around 3 seconds, he has probably sensed that you were about to just go, he finally said, 'You - you and Sherlock - have not yet decided where to meet?' Your voice was soft and low, like the breeze at night.

'I've told you, I'll wait for him to find me.'

He softly nodded.

'If that's all you've got to say, I'm off.' You gave him one last gaze and disappeared into the darkness.

You feel like this wasn't what he wanted to ask, but when the it comes to the tip of the tongue, they just can't slip out. You can still comprehend these usual feelings. When you were just like him, heaven knows how many times you had held back the words that almost escaped, and you don't even remember whatever you eventually said. He was afraid of this plan. After all, you were to stand on a rooftop and persuade Sherlock Holmes to jump off it, but you didn't tell him what you would do if you didn't make it. Of course you didn't tell him; if you did, this plan would not have even started. There will never be once that he lets you hurt yourself, even if this wouldn't do any actual harm to you. Last night, you have clearly stated that you would not let him know your plan B in advance, but even with this, he still made this call. He just wanted to keep everything in control, but he should also know there was no way you would pick it up, right?

The song stopped.

You looked up, exhaling the completely useless air that stuffed in your lungs. The sunshine enveloped from behind, flowing over me and lighting up the trees and buildings. Everything is as clear and bright as watercolour that looked so wrong with that moment, sort of like a forced smile from a dying life. But well, when one is about to die, what else can be done except forcing a smile? Let's not talk about how much it will take you to reach the day when you're dying, which in the end makes everyday alive almost the same with being dead - or maybe they're just the same for you.

The phone rang again. It surprised you that he hadn't yet given up, that he still thought you would pick up a phone call at this step of the plan. You felt pain in your chest; it was some kind of long-lost feeling, strange, like being cared. You let the slightly sarcastic song sing on, the sound eventually getting lost in the sun and the wind.

The door was finally opened. You refused his call, silently saying sorry as your finger pressed on the red button. This should be the moment when his last shield eventually collapsed; you didn't even stop yourself imagining how he hopelessly fell on his knees, how tears once again streamed down his cheeks after all those years, my number still on the screen of your phone. Although he mistakenly thought that the second you hung up was the second that your plan failed, he was not all wrong; after all, you shot yourself.

Right at this moment, inside his eyes, you see the fear that has been piled up for so long, kept down for so long, and eventually erupted this time, all at once. And it's just at this moment that you some to realise that you should have told him your truths earlier. You come to realise that you are much more important to him than vice versa. That you can watch people come and go and stay where you are, but for him, meeting you and being with you is the once and only once in his entire life. You really should have teared this meaningless disguise into pieces long before. But right now, all you can do is lie down flat with fake blood under your head and stare up at the sky with blank eyes, counting down the time it takes for the wounds to heal. Your heart don't need to beat and you don't need to breathe or blink, which makes it easy to play dead. Of course you know that you're just lying to him like this, watching him breaking down little by little from the corner of your eyes. He must have run all the way up from the emergency access or he would have crashed with the flow of people rushing downstairs. You surely can tell him everything just right here and no one will even hear him cry out of shock. Yet you choose to go on with your acting - you don't know what makes you procrastinate again and again, even when it has gone this far. He finally comes close, cautiously takes out the pistol that your left hand is still holding on to, pushes up the safe, and puts it in his pocket. He cleans the blood that doesn't even belongs to you with slightly shaky hands before picking up your ice cold body as gently as possible. You close your eyes. He rushes down the emergency access and hides into the car that has been waiting at the back entrance. The whole way, he is so quiet like a puppet without even much noise of breathing. The only thing that tells you he's still alive is the temperature of your body pressed next to mine. The car pulls up beside the fences of the backyard.

At this time of the year, all that's left blooming are the plants of Rosaceae; you know without looking. He lays you down on the bench under pergola covered with climbing roses, then carefully places your head upon his lap, his one hand closing on your left hand which has pulled the trigger. The flowers have not yet all withered away, but as wind goes through, scattered petals still fall like snow, lingering in the air with misty fragrances. His cool fingers caress through your freezing cheeks, soft, restrained. It seems like he has sensed something that holds him back from immediately dealing with you 'death'; instead, he's simply sitting beneath this pergola with half-faded roses, whiling away the time that should have been bitterly painful, and with this silence, wearing down as well your last bit of stamina. Yes, he may already know that when it's come this far, the power of keeping such a secret has been eroded to almost none, and that is when he can easily smash this wall.

'Tell me,' he says with an indistinctly soft, husky and slightly broken voice, 'tell me what the hell was that.'

You choose to 'revive' in a fairytale style - you can't deny that this sounds funny, but you still prefer that the first thing you see is his smiling face rather than an astonished one. You wait for him to finish, and as he's holding his breathe with one last bit of clinging hope, you slowly open your eyes. With the vines on the pergola, the sunshine isn't piercingly bright. He's not looking at you. He absentmindedly watches the petals fall one by one, long, light brown lashes casting shadows on the unfocused azure eyes. You just gaze at him. It's not until some five seconds have passed that he feels your stare. At first, he can't completely take this fact. Then after a short blank, he tightens the grip around your still cold hand, a faint smile silently appears across his lips.

'I'm not dead.' You declare before he can say anything stupid.

This is when he suddenly realises that your body temperature hasn't yet turned normal at all.

'I'm afraid I won't be dead before you are,' you continue, some kind of dried up taunt in your voice, 'should've told you.' You try to sit up, supporting your body with your right arm, but immediately pushed back down by him. 'I'm half-recovered. I certainly won't shoot my own cervical vertebra.'

He doesn't really get it, but still nods, helping you up and waiting for you to go on.

'I won't be dead, not even when blasted into pieces.' You try to look calm like telling a boring story, 'Neither will I age, and my wounds will just heal. So I shot myself,' when these words come out, he suddenly holds your left shoulder tighter. You give him a glance, 'and it's no big deal.' You pull out your right hand from between his palm and lap, softly stroking the scar on the back of his hand with your thumb. Your hand is still cold as ice.

His warm breath falls on your cheek. 'And neither will that hurt?' Having hesitated for long enough, he asks.

You go silent. 'Yes, it will.'

He pulls you into his arms like soothing a child, leaving a gentle kiss on your pale forehead before being pushed away. 'Then why did you -'

''Because I've got no choice.' You look into his eyes.

Clearly aware of what it means, he avoids your stare. 'So...' He hesitatingly takes a deep breath, 'how long have you lived?'

'I don't know.' You let out a soft sigh, 'When I found -'

'Wait,' he suddenly turns to face you, 'you said you wouldn't die or age...'

You wait for him to continue. He doesn't have the courage to meet your eyes, 'so it means that, as everyone around you grow old and pass away, you're still there.'

You don't know what to say. You finally come to realise what it has always been that has kept you from telling him the truth. Not the fear of the nonsense from others when the word gets spread, not at all. It's just the fear that he would understand too much at once. Whether anything of him will change because of this, it will be something that takes a lot to forget, but without yourself standing there and talking about all this, few will believe it's true when he tells people. It already has taken quite a long time for yourself to accept the absurd fact, and what you are really afraid of is adding another ridiculous burden to his life that, already, can come to its end at any time. Yet what he said is pure reality. For all those years, people come, stay and leave like film slides, recent ones still remaining in your mind, older ones barely having an impression left, and therefore barely causing pain. You're not very sad about yourself, nor about the people and things that are gone. You're simply surprised that he can speak it out like this, since for someone with limited life, especially someone at his age, it's very difficult to fathom - how you can bear watching lives pass one after another, how you can accept and be accepted by every era, how you manage to be so unfeeling about the lives of others and of yourself. It's like a lighthouse, serenely watching every violent wave roar, collide and break beneath it. Strange or familiar boats passing by; some probably made it back to the harbour and some probably never returned, and the lighthouse never knows. It just remains where it is forever as always, looking down at everything like an audience of a play, and as night falls, delivering its light until the end of time.

'Let's stop here.' He abruptly says.

He hasn't yet completely recovered from your fake death. He eventually understands that you have always been like this, and that you forbidding anyone coming close was only to keep this secret; he just needs time to get used to having a body around who doesn't have a heartbeat, doesn't need to breathe and doesn't even need metabolism - but no, you're still different from a body, and he knows that too. A body doesn't feel pain, a body doesn't do useless things like inhaling and exhaling and bathing with boiling water just to look 'normal', and he certainly doesn't treat a body with so much care. The only thing in common that you have with a body, is probably just that it's been ages since you last tasted tears.

And at this moment, he gets up, placing an arm around your waist and holding you close, your deadly cold cheek pressed against his warm chest where you hear his heartbeat.

'It's too cold outside.' Softly says he.

You feel a hot drop of liquid slides down your face. It's this instant that you become aware of how low your body temperature must be and how cold he must feel holding you like this.

Wind caresses through the pergola, lingering with the withered petals as they fall. The fragrance diffuses into the air.

**Author's Note:**

> Finally finished!! Gonna go take back my passports and see if I got the visa, ha. Actually translating Chinese into English is a huge lot harder than translating English to French (ofc), and this has taken me some three days and I kept forgetting about the person switch thing. And damn my pharyngitis! I don't even think it's because I've been suffering from it for 10 years that it breaks out again. It's the fucking smog okay! I opened the curtains this morning and couldn't see a shit from me window Beijing is hell merde! Went to 798 Art Zone with Eva yesterday and putain I felt like I was dying in M Woods. It's Andy Warhol okay and I was just coughing like wtf. Right too much grumping. But Beijing is no longer a place to survive no. Oh and one more time _Roses_ by HomeTown is SO BEAUTIFUL!!


End file.
